This disclosure relates to apparatus especially useful in the dairy business, and more specifically, apparatus useful for spreading animal feed such as silage along a trough, and for spreading bedding material in the stalls for the cows to rest on and for spreading other particulate material.
Dairy cows are typically fed from a long trough or other linear receptacle wherein the cows line up on one side of the trough and have access to the trough via a low retaining wall having partitions for spacing the feeding cows. The adjacent side of the trough is open so as to allow room for a vehicle to pass and unload feed into the trough along the trough length. Prior art spreaders do not provide the capability to discharge the desired quantity of feed while moving and confining the feed to the trough without wasting excessive feed by inadvertently overshooting or undershooting the trough and spreading the feed onto the ground. Thus, one objective of this instant disclosure is an apparatus which is mounted to a skid loader, having a hopper filled with silage or other animal feed, such that the feed may be discharged rapidly and accurately into the trough as the skid loader moves along the trough length.
Typically, the dairy cows sleep in stalls having a floor covered with a resilient bedding material such as sawdust or wood shavings or wood turnings. Normally, the bedding is removed and replaced daily, and it is therefore desirable that the task of uniformly spreading the bedding be accomplished rapidly. In the prior art it has been necessary to apply the bedding by driving a skid loader mounted hopper into each stall, spreading the bedding, backing out of the stall, turning the skid loader, entering the next stall, spreading the bedding, and repeating the process for each stall, in a spreading mode referred to as an intermittent spread.
Thus, another objective of this instant disclosure is spreading apparatus which discharges the bedding material from the side of the apparatus, so that the floor of the stalls may be covered with bedding as the skid loader passes along a path outside the stalls without having to enter the individual stalls.
Another objective is to provide apparatus which can be used to spread bedding material, then emptied and cleaned, and then be used for spreading animal feed into a trough or other feeding receptacle. The prior art spreaders do not provide the capability to use the same spreader for both moist animal feed such as corn silage and dry sawdust, owing primarily to the tendency for the moist silage to agglomerate or clump and fail to spread uniformly and reliably.
Yet another objective is to provide spreading apparatus useful for spreading other particulate material such as mulch or oil-absorbing material.
U.S. Pat. No. Des. 402,670, copy included herein, describes an ornamental design for a material spreader hopper.
The disclosed apparatus provides the capability to spread a variety of particulate materials, both wet and dry, in several differing spreading modes. These spreading modes includes area coverage, such as blanketing the floor of cow stalls with bedding material; linear coverage, such as filling a long trough with animal feed; and forming piles or heaps of material such as animal feed placed in a pasture or feed lot.
A hopper for holding the spreadable material has a chain driven conveyor or belt conveyor located at the bottom of the hopper. The conveyor is driven by a hydraulic motor using pressurized fluid supplied by the prime mover such as a skid loader or tractor. The hopper interior has sloping surfaces to channel the material onto the conveyor. Moist or damp material such as silage tend to agglomerate or otherwise clump together and may resist falling onto the conveyor solely under the force of gravity.
This condition is prevented by a transversely mounted agitator shaft having a plurality of radial arms or beaters secured thereto. The beaters are immersed within the particulate material and the beaters are rotated around the agitator shaft so as to urge the material to move downward and onto the moving conveyor. The agitator shaft is also powered by a drive motor.
The direction of conveyor movement is controlled by the direction of the hydraulic fluid flow, and is thereby bidirectional so as to provide the capability to spread from either side of the apparatus. The quantity of material spread per minute is regulated by the opening in a manually controlled gate located at each end of the conveyor. The throw distance of the spread particulate material is controllable by the hydraulic fluid velocity, and the height of the hopper above the ground.
A removable deflector is provided for use when filling a trough with feed. The deflector plate intercepts the horizontal flow of discharged feed and deflects it downward, so as to minimize the feed spread outside the trough. The deflector is also useful in forming piles of spreadable material when desired, and for changing the direction of the discharged material.
The disclosed apparatus is useful for spreading particulate material such as animal feed along a trough, for example, and for spreading animal bedding by throwing the material for distances of the order of 20 feet so as to provide area coverage. The particulate material may be deposited in a heap when so desired. The term spreading is used in this disclosure to include linear spreading such as trough filling; area spreading such as bedding placement; and heap forming such as depositing feed in a pile.
In addition to its use for spreading animal feed and bedding materials, the disclosed apparatus is useful for spreading many other particulate materials, including mulch, oil-absorbers, and manure.
Following this brief description of the invention, a number of drawings, detailed descriptions and claims more fully define the invention.